With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off." In the world's nuclear arsenal are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? To explore these and other questions... FTW's Act 2 Blog. Read, comment, take heart! Orkin

20 comments:

Oh no! Not these lame-brained sunlight-blocking ideas again! Don't any of these people garden? Here in Japan, the monsoon season refuses to end (a predicted result of climate change), and nearly every day is cloudy or rainy. It's cooler than usual, I'll grant you that. But if you want to see the effects of reduced insolation, look at the crops and the rising prices of produce. My rice plants are heading two weeks late this year. And now these great scientific minds want to further reduce sunlight!

Diaspora has left a new comment on your post "Yin/Yang, Economy/Swine Flu":

The New World Order, Pandemic Flu and PROMIS…

“...According to ex-LAPD drug enforcement officer, Mike Ruppert, this amazing computer software called PROMIS was: "Created in the 1970s by former National Security Agency (NSA) programmer and engineer Bill Hamilton, now President of Washington, D.C.'s Inslaw Corporation, PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management Information System) crossed a threshold in the evolution of computer programming. Working from either huge mainframe computer systems or smaller networks powered by the progenitors of today's PCs, PROMIS, from its first "test drive" a quarter century ago, was able to do one thing that no other program had ever been able to do. It was able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of different computer programs or data bases simultaneously, regardless of the language in which the original programs had been written or the operating system or platforms on which that data base was then currently installed."

For purposes of our discussion, however, one needs to know and understand that "PROMIS" software has been modified and greatly expanded from its original 1972 prototype. We need to track and document the software's evolution which eventually allowed the MAPPING AND COMPLETE DETAILED SEQUENCING of DNA and RNA strands ¬ the very CODE OF LIFE. Once this is understood, one can better understand exactly HOW scientists in top-secret U.S. Government labs were able to successfully resurrect the deadly killer virus of 1918, place it in human plasmid cells, and ultimately to a killer, time-released VACCINE.”

I wish to direct everyone's attention to an answer to a question on Robert Rapier's blog, "R-Squared Energy Blog." He calculates how much more energy we would have to produce if the economy were to be sustained by renewables instead of oil. Of course the example is simplified (for example, only oil is considered), but it gives one a ball-park idea of the magnitude of the problem. To be perfectly honest, the calculation result is absolutely shocking.

A friend of mine has two young kids, who came in contact with their uncle, who later developed a swine flu. The uncle came through with no problems, but my friend immediately bought Tamiflu and started feeding it to the kids... For entire week.

After I confronted her about the side effects the drug can have on her 2 and 4 year old, she replied: "it's better to protect them from the swine flu first. They are young, and can handle any side effects"...

Oregon Survivor, just more abiotic spin, is it not? And yes, by pointing us towards the comments the abiotic cornucopians really get flushed out of the woodwork, so to speak.

I mean, is the first giveaway not who financed this research, i.e. U.S. Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Agency through the Carnegie/DOE Alliance Center, the National Science Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the Carnegie Institution.

The Keck Foundation happened to be founded in 1954 by William Myron Keck, founder and president of Superior Oil Company (now part of ExxonMobil).

Not to mention that this hypothetical "stuff" (like the purported Arctic 400 bbl) would have to be financially brought to the surface. Matt Simmons has shot enough holes in this to qualify the attempt as Swiss cheese on steroids.

As we continuously show ourselves, FTW is a very special place... as are all places, everywhere; each of which is, at the same time, entirely unique in its own individualized character. So it is of this Universe, so it is for FTW... and so it is for all the rest of us and everything else, too.

Your most recent 'comments page' post, Jenna, re [']The New World Order, Pandemic Flu and PROMIS…['], exemplifies both a masterpiece and punctuational hodge-podge of cryptographic revelation. (Agape wins is surely swooning all over himself awash in this magnificent triple X ambiguity. :) For purposes of absolutely serious discussion, however, I'm going to jump to that last paragraph of your (Jenna's) last 'comments page' post (which begins with the words "[f]or purposes of our [exactly who does "our" include?] discussion") and point to -- while concurring with -- the perception that the "PROMIS" software described therein said paragraph indeed 'principly' (not principally) conforms with that which is therein referred to as "the very CODE OF LIFE". Also:

Three days after that RanD August 06 post -- i.e., on Aug 09, 2009 -- RanD is informed via listening to Coast to Coast AM's Ian Punnett interview of David Sereda, given and recorded on Aug 08, 2009, that Sereda has just published his latest work, titled "Quantum Communication". Bottom line:

What we're doing right here at FTW is exactly how WE are simultaneously acquiring and spreading knowledge within the greater, full-blown existential, quantum communication modality. And, it's in principle always been and always will be like this. What's particularly special about "these times" for "US", however, is that it's right now -- during ALL human kinds' Universe-wide state of flux from one state of Universe-wide experiential being to another -- that Earth's/Gaia's human kind species is finally reaching ITS/OUR species-wide consciousness of such matters.

Hang on, contribute to as you will, and enjoy the ride as WE actualize by communicating ourselves into reality's existential objective(s).

'..."pork" is made from pig ovaries retrieved from slaughterhouses, which are fertilized with pig semen, transforming them into embryos. They are then placed in a nutrient solution, where they grow and develop.

'It's a long way from the popular image of animals wandering round the farmyard in the sunshine, but then so is modern intensive farming.'

Sheesh, that says it all. Is it so bad to be vegetarian, or eat meat only occassionally? Is the addiction worth this?

I can't beleive PETA is in it, too.

Sheesh.

Regarding the cloud ships, Taiwan just took two meters of rainfall from a typhoon that had been building up water in the Pacific. Hundreds of people are missing. Clouds don't just sit out in the ocean and look beautiful or block the sun. Hydrology is complex, like all of Nature. These quick fixes always neglect obvious complications. Same with the meat thing.

As a programmer the whole PROMIS story is interesting to follow but I don't believe the magic bullet/program aspect of it one bit.

The poster made it sound like this ONE program does like everything from banking to your everyday gene-sequencing and super-weapons creation... sure.

It was also noted somewhere that the program was a "staggering" 560.000 lines of code. Well thats not staggering at all, especialy not so for a program that is written in a low level language.

I believe that PROMIS was a a very nice program that could read and translate (i.e. analyzing the data until it found a good way to represent it) databases. I think that in its various implementations there was PROMIS plus some other specific program bit. That means it doesn't have a "Make virus to kill blank" button next to the "Steal money from blank" button.

It's very interesting to see how we're being manipulated here in the USA around the bailouts and the proposed healthcare program. The media is reporting from these "town hall" meetings about the outrage over the healthcare program, but did any politicians ever hold similar town hall meetings about the bailout programs before they were approved?

I guess the people really running things didn't want to stir up and report on any outrage about the bailouts!

Regarding the article on the U.S. creating a greater military presence in Colombia...There's a movie that's available to watch on Google Video called "Plan Colombia". In the movie they discuss that the primary reason for the U.S. military presence in Colombia is to clear anyone away from land that's of interest to the oil companies operating down there. It's all done under the cover of "the war on drugs", but whether it's people growing coca or families living in those locations, if they're in the way of what the oil companies want they have to be removed.

"I predict that in the fall there will be announcements that the swine flu has mutated into a more deadly,dangerous form.Whether or not this is actually true is yet to be seen,but I predict that the media will create mass hysteria about the dangers of this fast spreading,potentially deadly swine flu.The media and the government will then use scare tactics to convince you to take the useless and dangerous drug Tamiflu and get a vaccination against the swine flu."

it is interesting watching the hoopla around town meetings - i guess if tptb can allow some kind of emotional 'outlet' for the frustration they may as well engage it on this issue and stall the same frustration in the streets or against them directly - some steam must be allowed to 'escape' the pressure cooker before it explodes or before they wish it to

All non-violent criminals -- including those arrested on drug charges and even if they ran afoul of the three strikes and you're out law -- should be considered for release before any violent ones are. But some things are too obvious for .gov officials.